Family friend hailed as hero after using Snapchat to track down and rescue missing 15-year-old girl

Snapchat has been under fire lately, but it helped one Georgia man locate a 15-year-old girl after she went missing from her grandmother’s home in Gordon County, Ga., Saturday, according to a local news report.

Family friend Dakota Moss, 27, came across a photo of the missing teen, Amber Austin, on Snapchat just a few days later, NBC affiliate 11Alive reports. On Wednesday, he hatched a plan to trap the man who was keeping Austin at his home.

Doing “what any father would do,” Moss posed as a woman on social media and invited the man over to his house. He alerted the authorities, who arrested 34-year-old Dayton Koop on charges on unruliness of a minor. Koop reportedly also had meth in his possession.

Social media came in handy in this missing teen case. (Photo: PeopleImages/Getty Images)

It’s unclear if Koop had abducted Austin, but Moss said the teen was found in the backseat of his car with a bandana tied around her wrist. Police are now hailing Moss for his quick thinking.

“When he had pulled in [to his home], he went around to the back,” Moss said of Koop’s capture. “I had my roommate go out the back, and I called the sheriff’s department knowing he was there.

“She seemed real scared,” he said of Austin. “She had tears in her eyes. I prayed so hard that God would help me find this girl, and it all worked out for the best.”